Japanese Light Novel Book Club discussion

A certain college girl who's loved books ever since she was a little girl dies in an accident and is reborn in another world she knows nothing about. She is now Myne, the sickly five-year-old daughter of a poor soldier. To make things worse, the world she's been reborn in has a very low literacy rate and books mostly don't exist. She'd have to pay an enormous amount of money to buy one.

Myne resolves herself: If there aren't any books, she'll just have to make them! Her goal is to become a librarian. This story begins with her quest to make books so she can live surrounded by them!

Dive into this biblio-fantasy written for book lovers and bookworms!

Discuss Ascendance of a Bookworm Volume 1 here!

Reading Schedule
2/2-2/8: Prologue - Books: Unatainable
2/9-2/15: Lifestyle Overhaul - Winter Preparations
2/16-2/22: Stone Slate Get! - Helping Out Otto
2/23-2/29: Tuuli's Hair Ornament - Clay Tablets Won't Work
3/1-3/7: Tuuli's Baptism - Intense Battle with Food
3/8-3/14: Mokkan and a Mysterious Fever - Epilogue
3/15-3/21: Extra Stories

I've been watching the anime and I'm really interested in checking out the source material.

I read vol. 1 and loved it. I'm ready for a re-read.

Read V1 for this too. It was fun, but I was hoping for more of a hero who knew her stories than a hero who was obsessed with paper and binding and the general book creation process itself (it's a means to an end of course, but I was hoping she'd throw out more references to make her seem worldly in the novel realm; if there are some vague references, I could have missed them tbf).

It was cute seeing Myne (view spoiler)[care about her sister's big day and introduce new crafts into the world that helped her mom (like shampoo). (hide spoiler)]

Have no exact clue where this is going, which is always exciting. I hear it proceeds along at not too fast a pace (I heard Myne was (view spoiler)[13 (hide spoiler)] in the latest Japanese volume).

After reading this week's chapters I'm amazed how much is added to the story by seeing Myne's inner thoughts compared to that of anime.

I'm loving how they put the words people of the world (or just Myne) don't know in parenthesis and people respond to Myne with confusion.

Howard wrote: "I'm loving how they put the words people of the world (or just Myne) don't know in parenthesis and people respond to Myne with confusion."

That was a nice touch. :)

How are you enjoying it so far? I'm a little behind (make that a lot behind), but I've liked what I've read so far. :)

Even I watched the show I'm enjoying the book. I love the perspective of the extreme culture shock, something I didn't get as much from the show

Read this a while back, and remember enjoying parts but wanting to like it more than I did overall.

I wrote at the time: There's a lot of impressive research and knowledge behind this and clever moments, but they're undermined by the setup, approach, and certain omissions. Ok read that could have been more. Though a strong epilogue leading into volume 2 does indicate some of my issues with this might be addressed there.

I'm about a quarter of the way through (how'd I manage to fall so far behind? TT_TT) and I'm impressed by some of the world building and the culture shock, but I'm struggling a bit, and I'm not sure why.

There's nothing I dislike, but it's like it's not grabbing me as much as I would expect, you know?

I was going to be getting my physical copy through the library and then everything got shutdown. I'll get to this book at some point in the future.

Dang. I got a few light novels out luckily in time from my library. Probably try and read one of them tomorrow (Reincarnated as a Sword volume 1).

I thought it was interesting how young the character is in this, and from what I can tell the plot is going to be slow paced, we're not going to get a huge time skip to her being marriage age.

I do remember thinking she'd show off her book knowledge more, but not much there, at least so far. If you do want another character in a fantasy setting who writes books (and is into the themes and plotlines she can pull from real life Imperial courtyard drama) I recommend The Engagement of Marielle Clarac . I just started reading that, but it seems like a good one. =)

Terrence wrote: "If you do want another character in a fantasy setting who writes books (and is into the themes and plotlines she can pull from real life Imperial courtyard drama) I recommend The Engagement of Marielle Clarac . I just started reading that, but it seems like a good one. =)"

That one sounds like fun! I'll look into it when I catch up on my other reads lol

I finally finished. This was definitely the kind of light novel I had to be in the mood to read. Not because it was hard to read when I wasn't in the mood, but it was hard to convince myself to pick it up and keep going.

This one was World Building: The Light Novel, and it did a really good job at that, I think. I'm looking forward to taking a look at future volumes and seeing where all this ends up. :)

Finally got around to finishing this up and as I expected I rather enjoyed this one. It was interesting to have an Isekai where the MC wasn't instantly granted god like powers or what not. Even her previous knowledge doesn't mean things were an instant success. As others have mentioned there was a lot that went into the world building which made things interesting. It wasn't just "welcome to generic medieval fantasy five you already know where everything is". It also feels exciting that we've only scratched the surface of the world building. We have only seen what Myne has experienced so far and it feels like there is still so much mystery in the world. I'll definitely be reading more in this series.